This invention relates to a battery and, in particular, to a battery for supplying power to a mobile or laptop computer.
The mobile or laptop computer market has two major trends. One trend is towards smaller, lighter computers, such as palmtop computers, and the other is towards more powerful integrated functional systems, incorporating peripheral devices such as CD-ROM drives, cellular FAX/modems and color printers. These two trends are divergent with respect to system requirements and serve two specialized markets. Highly functional integrated systems serve a unique segment of the business market that actually rely on mobile computing, the "mobile office" concept.
The typical laptop computer has an operating time of two hours or less with currently available batteries which are housed in the computer. This brief run time greatly limits the usefulness of the device, and in fact may defeat the purpose of having a laptop.
A possible solution to the short operating run time, which becomes even shorter with the addition of peripheral devices, is to increase the energy storage capacity of the battery. This necessitates making the battery larger, thereby increasing the physical size and weight of the computer and is not an acceptable approach. Another approach is to carry along extra batteries. This approach is extremely inconvenient.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide a battery for a mobile computer which can be of higher power, but which does not necessitate increasing the size of the computer.